The Ent

Ents, also known as talking trees, are rarely encountered and its a great privilege to actually see or talk with one.

Oracular Trees are attributed with the ability to speak to individuals, especially those gifted in divination. In particular, Druids were said to be able to consult Oak trees for divinatory purposes, as were the Streghe with Rowan trees.

The word “Ent” was taken from the Anglo-Saxon (Old English) word ent, meaning “giant”. Ents are probably the most ubiquitous of all creatures in fantasy and folklore, perhaps second only to dragons, most famously known now as the Ents in J. R. R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth stories.

Perhaps not quite Ents, but the Cad Goddeu (The Battle of the Trees) medieval Welsh poem preserved in the 14th-century manuscript known as the Book of Taliesin refers to a traditional story in which the legendary enchanter Gwydion animates the trees of the forest to fight as his army. The poem is especially notable for its striking and enigmatic symbolism and the wide variety of interpretations this has occasioned particulalry by Robert Graves in his book The White Goddess.

I made a short animation based on the Cad Goddeu –

Taliesins Battle Of The Trees;

In Ireland a tree may help a person look for a leprechaun’s gold, although it normally does not know where the gold is.

According to Greek mythology, all the trees in the Dodona (northwestern Greece, Epirus) grove (the forest beside the sanctuary of Zeus) became endowed with the gift of prophecy, and the oaks not only spoke and delivered oracles while in a living state, when built into the ship Argo the wood spoke and warned of approaching calamities.

The rustling of the leaves on an Oak tree was regarded as the voice of Zeus.

The Greek Talking Elm: Philostratus spoke about two philosophers arguing beneath an elm tree in Ethiopia which spoke up to add to the conversation.

The Indian Tree of the Sun and the Moon: Told the future. Two parts of the tree trunk spoke depending on the time of day; in the daytime the tree spoke as a male and at night it spoke as a female. Alexander the Great and Marco Polo are said to have visited this tree.

In Hugh Lofting’s 1928 novel Doctor Dolittle in the Moon, the lunar flowers and trees are intelligent and capable of communication by using scents, the sounds of wind through branches, etc.

Imbued with Earth wisdom gathered over their very long life spans, the Ent is a friend to consult on all serious matters, but dont expect a hasty answer for as J.R.R.Tolkien explains of the Ent “My name is growing all the time, and I’ve lived a very long, long time; so my name is like a story. Real names tell you the story of the things they belong to in my language, in the Old Entish as you might say. It is a lovely language, but it takes a very long time to say anything in it, because we do not say anything in it, unless it is worth taking a long time to say, and to listen to.”